Current Line Of Products
With an ever expanding line-up of products, it would take weeks to go through everything Xiaomi has produced in the past, so I’ll showcase in this article what is currently available.
Smartphones and Tablet: When most people here Xiaomi, they will mostly associate it the line of smartphones they produce, so there is no better place to start.
Mi Note & Mi Note Pro
After receiving many requests for a Mi with a larger screen, the Mi Note and the Mi Note Pro. The former packed a Snapdragon 801 processor with a 5.7″ Sharp/JDI negative full HD display. With a thickness of just 6.95mm, the Mi Note had a 13MP camera, 3Gb of RAM, dual sim capabilities and a 3000mAh battery, all housed within an aluminium frame. The 13MP Sony Camera has Optical Image Stabilization with an aperture of just f/2.0. Also containing a 24bit/192KHz lossless playback supported audio system, the Mi Note comes in 2 varities; 16Gb or 64Gb of storage.
The Mi Note Pro ups the ante by having an even faster Snapdragon 810 processor and 4Gb. Not only that, the display has been upgraded to 2K able to show resolutions of 2560×1440 at 515 pixels per sq inch and supports LTE Cat 9 with download speeds of 450Mbps and uploads of 50Mbps.
Full specs can be found here.
Now consider that the 64Gb version of the Mi Note retails for HK$2499 (around US$322) this is truly a steal if you compare it with smartphones with similar form factors and specs from the likes of Samsung, and you’ll realize how much extra bang per buck you will be getting.
Mi 4i
Considered as sitting in the mid-range of the Xiaomi smartphone range, the Mi 4i was released in April 2015. The Mi 4i uses a premium 5″ Full HD 1080p from Sharp and JDI and coupled with Sunlight Display, hardware-level algorithms to adjust contrast for each pixel in real-time, you get a dramatic improvement in readability in sunlight.
Posessing a 64bit Snapdragon 650 processor paired with an Adreno 405 GPU, the Mi 4i will handle every game you throw at it. With the same camera and dual-sim capabilities as the Mi Note, this model packs a 3120mAh battery that has quick charge which can charge 40% in an hour.
The Mi 4i comes in 5 colours; black, white, cyan, pink and yellow, with a matte finish on the back which is resistant to fingerprints and grease.
The Mi 4i comes in 2 varieties, 16Gb and 32Gb, with a retail price of HK$1399 and HK$1599 respectively. No, you did not read that wrong.
Mi 4
Launched back in August 2014, the Mi 4 was tauted as “The Fastest and Most Gorgeous Mi Phone Ever”, I guess that was before they had plans for the Mi 5 in place. Even though the Mi 4 is coming up to its 2nd birthday, its hardware specs is nothing to laugh about.
With a Snapdragon 801 2.5Ghz processor with 3Gb of RAM and an Adreno 330 GPU, the performance of the Mi 4 wouldn’t look too out of place even now. Having a 5″ display like the Mi 4i, this model has a slighty different camera thats still 13MP but made by Sony and Samsung and has an aperture of f/1.8! Everything residing within a stainless steel frame.
This model is not actually sold in Hong Kong by Xiaomi, but you can purchase one from resellers, you with the premium on top, it retails at around HK$2450.
Redmi Note 2
We start going down to the ‘budget’ range of the Xiaomi smartphones. As if the Mi Note and Mi 4i wasn’t cheap enough, the Redmi range is even cheaper!
Housed in a plastic enclosure, the Redmi Note 2 sports a 5.5″ display with a slower 64bit MediaTek Helio X10 octo-core processor with 2Gb of RAM and a Power VR G6200 GPU.
Like the Mi 4i, the Redmi Note 2 comes in 5 colours, and will take dual-sims, it supports LTE and 802.11ac Wi-Fi.
The Redmi Note 2 retails in Hong Kong for HK$1099!
Redmi 2
The baby of the smartphone party is the Redmi 2. Being the cheapest version of the Xiaomi smartphone range, most of the hardware has been slimmed down.
Like the Redmi Note 2, the enclosure is made from plastic. Having a 4.7″ IPS HD display, the Redmi 2 only has a 64bit Snapdragon 410 processor. Weighing in at 133g, it is 9.4mm thick and the camera has been trimmed down to 8MP. The battery also takes a cut, coming in at 2200mAh.
But then again, what more do you expect as it retails in Hong Kong for just HK$929!!
Mi Pad
The Mi Pad comes in both a 16Gb and 64Gb version, but even the lower storage capactiy one should not put you off as both come with an expandable micro SD card slot that takes up to 128Gb SD cards.
With a 7.9″ display with Gorilla Glass 3, look can be deceiving, as initial impressions of playing with a Mi Pad, with it glass near flush to the corners, would not stand much drops, but reviews online reports otherwise.
With a NVIDIA Tegra K1 quad-core 2.2Ghz ARM Cortex-A15 GPU, the Mi Pad plays games superbly. Hands on playing with a Mi Pad was that it super responsive, unlike the cheap branded Android tablets out on the market that tends to be sluggish.
Price? The 16Gb model comes in at a very reasonable HK$1299. Not content with using Android? There’s a 64Gb version pre-installed with Windows.
Upcoming Models
In the last view months Xiaomi has announced that several new models will be coming out in the near future; the Mi 5, the Redmi Note 3 and the Mi Pad 2. There are many conflicting reports on the Xiaomi smartphones, with some highlighting the superb bang per buck with them, whilst others have had bad experiences with them falling apart after a few months. From reports, the new Mi 5 addresses the latters issues by having an improved quality build, and of course, improved performance (Snapdragon 820, the first smartphone with this processor) over its predecessor. The Mi 5 is priced at RMB1999.
